Don't Let Me Down
by Loren98
Summary: It has been four years since Lia died. Four years since Cassie killed her. Now, Emma is all grown up: sixteen, popular, and her dead sister's ghost haunting her every move. Will history repeat itself again? Or can Emma escape the darkness that trapped her own sister? *** I hope you guys like it! I'll start a part two if people want :p


Don't Let Me Down

I am nine years old again. I know something is wrong because I have this feeling, this scared flutter in the pit of my stomach. The house is dark and eerily quiet as I pad across the wooden floor boards to the light. Underneath the bathroom door comes a golden and shimmering _light_. Her siren call, seven years later, still beckons for me. I know still what is on the other side after all this time.

I touch the brass knob with my little girl fingers, she waits for me with the ivory handled knife nestled into the home of her hollow bird bones. The light is blinding. She is a weightless angel, a tall naked statue. A collection of angry red scars overlap on every starved limb, I know what happens next. My shriek transforms her pensive expression into a blank slate. Blood gushes from her engorged wounds.

Lia grows faint; she falls, spiralling down the rabbit hole like a decomposing Alice, her downy wings covering my eyes. She envelops me in her darkness, taking me down with her.

My eyes snap open, looking frantically for light out of the darkness. Bad dream. I've been having too many. I pull the covers off of me and get up to face another day. I rub the image of Lia from my tired eyes.

Mom places an Grande cup of coffee in the empty cup holder.

"You look like hell, no offensive." She winces at her words, "I look like hell too." I pick up the cup, letting the heat scald my hand a few moments before taking a burning sip

"I had another nightmare." I confess as she backs out of the driveway, eyes on the mirror. She doesn't reply until we've turned into the road.

"I have them too" She says, her eyes fixed on the road. "Not a day goes by I don't think of your sister, Emma." Her hand brushes her coat pocket, containing cigarettes she swore she quit years ago.

It's funny how some ghosts haunt you with sadness rather than fear. Mom pulls up to my school, kisses me on my cheek and writes me a late note in red ink. Only after she drives from the curb do I remember what I wanted to say. _I wish she would leave me alone_.

Later that day, after _School Emma_ hands in an essay and long overdue science homework... After she parades the long, scary hallways with a nice girl smile and pretty clothes, After accidently passing the framed yearbook photo of her dead skeleton sister three times: After all that fake keeping up with appearances bullshit is over, _I_ take a breath for the first time since I woke up from a bad dream into an even worse nightmare.

It's true that I see ghosts, but only hers. Only Lia. She floats past my homeroom in layers of insulated sweaters to keep her memory warm. A masquerade mask covers her porcelain face because the lanugo fuzz is growing in thick. It's true she's haunting me but not because I didn't save her, not because I threw her away like everyone else did. But because I am tired of remembering. I'm ready to give up the ghost. Four years ago, her rabbit heart gave out. Another relapse, after two years of starvation sobriety, proved deadly for poor Lia-Lia. No motel room this time, no little girl walking in as she performed open heart surgery on her empty corn husk body. Alone and mostly dead they found her. When they took off her sweaters and baggy sweatpants they discovered she was lying to us all. Seventy-six pounds, tummy polished clean: not a speck of food. Daddy cried when they showed him Lia's coat rack body. The space between her rib cage and hip bones resembled a deep valley with a rumbling echo. They tore the curtain off of her, revealing the soup bowl collarbones, concave cheekbones, and translucent skin. She emptied Jennifer's medicine cabinet down her throat and consequently, only had enough strength to shallowly cut one word into her sharp thigh. _Cass_.

I know that Lia will kill me because Cassandra Jane Parrish killed her. Ghosts crawl into your skin and make a home out of you. They crack open your brain and find out what gives you nightmares and what makes you lose hope. It's only a matter of time before Lia opens the right drawer and takes her pick.

David isn't my real dad. He's Lia's. My own father slowly faded after he left mom. First, with the visits. His old brown coat and thin smile promised to come home every other weekend, which became every other month, turning into every Christmas, until he made a new family of his own in a different state with a custom mailbox in the front yard. Next were his awkward phone calls, the way he choked out I love you out of obligation. Voicemails of apologies, empty promises cut off at the beep. The only news of his life came trickling down from my mom who cried when he said I wasn't his anymore. Lastly, it was the money. Daycare was too expensive for his new son and he always wanted a little boy in the first place anyways so his first attempt at a family became an old regret seldom mentioned. My mother explained this all to me in nicer words. She made root beer floats one night and told me that that my father "moved on" without us, that he "wasn't ready" for a family. She tried her best to protect me but no matter how hard she squuezed, sand still slipped between the cracks. Didn't matter how the cookie crumbled, Dad wanted a family, just not ours. Mom worked at the bank during the day and picked me up from the babysitter on her way home. It wasn't long before she met the true love of her life, Professor David Overbrook. He specialized in history, was published for his insight about wars from times where nobody starved to death by choice. Decades of civil unrest, ages ago: a simpler time when ghosts were not just a trick of the mind but the real deal. He met the president and owned a tuxedo which dazzled my mother so much she pretended not to notice his wedding ring, or the picture of another little girl in his wallet. I still can't remember if there were hearts or dollar signs dancing around her head when she gazed at him. Mr. Overbrook's own marriage splintered apart like an unclean break of bone. She was a doctor, mom told me. "The marriage was dying long before I came into the picture" She reassured her reflection, applying her makeup for another one of his glamorous dates.

Four years ago, David and mom split up. She gave him a choice: "You can live in this house with her ghost for the rest of your life David. Or you can let it go and move on with me. Me and your daughter: the one who's still breathing and calls you her dad." I watched her words come out with spittle and tears, between the railing bars of the staircase; I watched how the light in David's eyes grew dim. He took another sip of his drink, "My daughter is dead." She covered her mouth out of shock. Which puzzled me at the time, I reckon heartbreak is one thing she should have grown accustomed to after my first father. She filed for divorce soon after that; checking us into the Gateway motel and sobbing into her pillow every night, thinking I had fallen asleep. I wonder who my mother was referring to whenever she mumbled "I'm sorry" as she slept. Perhaps for me: at that point, I had had two men quit being my father. She failed as a mother twice. But what of the other daughter she let down? She lost Lia and I was all she had those motel nights. Nestled close to her, I dreamed of Cassandra Jane Parrish. She was bulimic. That meant she could have her cake and eat it too. Puking, her two skeleton fingers snaking down her throat over and over again until the slime wore down her hide and tore a hole deep inside her. She was bulimic. Which meant that she gave into temptation every single time, until the very last time: when it finally caught up to her. Mom tells me that David quit his job at the college after he gave us half of everything he owned. She tells me he sleeps on Chloe's couch, Lia's mother, because he can't work: too depressed, too guilty. Chloe isn't any better, her hair turned completely white with grief, deep wrinkles on her bereaved face. Working day and night, sleeping between operations and consultations. David and Chloe: two pieces of a puzzle that when put together, only tell two thirds of a story. They will always be missing something.

After Lia killed herself, after the sticky divorce, and the move across town in Omeskeag, mom put me into therapy to wash the dark stain Lia had left on me. My therapist's name is Nancy Parker. She is an older woman with grandchildren whom enjoys cherry flavoured cough drops. Dr. Parker asks a lot of questions about my dead sister and makes me talk about things I'd rather forget. I leave out some things about Lia when I talk to Dr. Parker, so she doesn't steal all the good memories, leaving me with all the ravenous information that makes me an insomniac. She used to drive me to soccer practice and let me eat potato chips even though my mom hated junk food. Lia taught me multiplication, came to my recitals, called me her sister. Loved me. The great Lia: who came so close to living but fell so devastatingly short in the end, right before the finish line. Never made it to the other side. The ghosts were too scary and when she swallowed those pills she must have thought she was saving Cassie. The only friend who was broken in all the same places as her, who shared identical fault lines. I tell Dr. Parker that I'm afraid I'm next. Lia wants my bones on a porcelain frame, trying so hard to make me into a winter girl: someone who is not dead but by no means alive.

The middle of winter right after the holidays, this is where I stand. Dusk comes at five pm and mom threw out the tree the day after new year's. I collapse on the couch before the television, flipping through infomercials and reality programs. Guzzling half of a water bottle, I suddenly remember Lia doing the same thing. Every Tuesday morning, right before my mother would check her weight on a scale, long ago, Lia would fill up her tummy with gallons of water: adding on extra fake pounds. I never understood why Lia did this until I was older, didn't understand that she had always been cheating the game. Sewing pennies into her robe pockets to mess with the scale numbers, feeding our cats soggy cereal and strategically leaving the empty box in plain sight. Lia wasn't a bad person; she was just always bad to herself. The doorbell rings half an hour later just as a casually dressed woman makes chicken salad sandwiches using a blender she claims is "magic." I raise a single blind looking out the window to see Chris Metcalfe standing on my front porch. I let him in; of course, he's supposed to be my boyfriend after all. Chris and I met before the Lia ghost started haunting me, it started off innocently enough. His ice cream dates were sweet and his single roses left in my locker made me blush. Everyone at school said I was lucky, and they were right. He is the perfect boyfriend in many ways. Loyal, tall, athletic, smart, and funny. Very funny.

"Where's Jennifer?" Chris asks, as if he doesn't already know. I put my slender hand on his handsome face.

"Relax. We've got time." He places his lips against mine, I hold his neck with both hands, pressing my entire body against his, _I want this_. I tell myself. We stumble up the stairs to my bedroom, our lips feverish for another's skin. I push him onto my bed and make the mistake of looking into the corner of the room. Lia winks at me from where she's slouched on a bean bag chair. Her oversized hoodie and blue jeans make her look like a caricature. Her hair is wet and stringy, droplets of water roll down the front of her sweater. _Emma you've been a _very _bad girl, _she sing songs.

"Babe?" I reluctantly take my eyes off her and turn back to David. "What's wrong?" His concern reminds me I'm still breathing, still alive. Unlike her.

"Nothing. I thought I saw something." I wrap my body around his; caress his lower lip with the pad of my thumb before kissing it. Chris rolls over, the weight of his body, heavy, on my chest and stomach, his puckered lips on my hot neck and chest, I peek sideways to see Lia has evaporated but she hasn't gone too far. Her scent- burnt sugar and cloves- still lingers. Chris whispers into my ear, the sensation of sex has long stopped producing a sharp ache but rather a docile quality, _I love you_, he promises. Lia giggles from a place far away.

By the time mom gets home, my bed sheets are in the wash, air freshener has taken away the scent of Chris's cologne, and I'm in sweat pants reading at the kitchen counter.

"How was your day, Emma?" I put down the book to look at her. She wears a pale blouse and black dress pants. I look at her tired face, and worn down expression. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Lia was haunting her too.

"It was good. How was work?" Mom opens the fridge and takes out cream for her fourth coffee of the day.

"I'm just glad to be home." She says with relief.

We go to our separate rooms and we will ignore each other until the exact same day repeats itself tomorrow and the day after until one of us is too old to remember the steps to this sad waltz. I listen to music, play solitaire on my laptop, read a few acts of _Othello_, and cry into my pillow with my music turned up so my mother doesn't hear my sobs. I do _anything_ to keep from falling asleep because once I close my eyes; I fall into her. Into her world where fairy tales of fair maidens and prince charming's are real and you can be swept away at any moment. Even if you don't want to be. Except in Lia's fairy tale, prince charming was always her illness. Poor Lia, poor and sad, she could never bring her mouth to swallow the food she so desperately needed. When she stopped breathing years ago, she lost her status as Disney princess and transformed into the witch disguised as an old woman. Lia haunts me, bearing a healthy apple in her deleterious hands. It's becoming difficult to refuse her offer. I tiptoe into the basement, each floor board exhales at the weight of my foot. I mount the treadmill, not bothering to turn on the light: solely focused on moving. I run fast like a rabbit, quick as a girl worn down by stale memories and hunted by the dead.


End file.
